021: Jillian Johnsrud – Living with Intention: A Road Map to Financial Independence

Jillian Johnsrud is a speaker and coach within the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early)community. She is also the author of Fire the Haters and achieved financial independence by the age of thirty-two. Jillian helps others chase down a life of intention and adventure on the way to Financial Independence.

Today, Jonathan and Jillian engage in a rich discussion on the power of being intentional, the difference between looking wealthy and actually building wealth, and the importance of maintaining a healthy relationship with work

📺 Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/w0-PxGRbCe8

Key Takeaways

01:14 – Jonathan introduces today’s guest, Jillian Johnsrud, who shares early lessons she learned about money

04:40 – Jillian reflects on marrying early and living off a modest annual salary

06:04 – Looking wealthy vs. actually building wealth

10:44 – Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)

14:32 – The flexibility that comes from maintaining a low cost of life and maintaining work-life balance

18:15 – The inspiration to write Fire the Haters

20:45 – Finding an incredibly supportive online community and the three distinct sections of Jillian’s book

28:57 – Jillian provides one practice to implement and one to avoid

33:50 – The last thing Jillian changed her mind about and one thing that she would like people to know about her

38:46 – Jonathan thanks Jillian for joining the show and let’s listeners know where to connect with her

Tweetable Quotes

“I also had this realization that money gives you options; it gives you choices. And in that moment, I desperately wanted more choices and more options than I thought we had.”(03:25)

“We were not on high earning career trajectories. So, I could look rich or I could be rich. But there wasn’t going to be enough money to do both. It was one or the other. So, we opted to actually build wealth instead of just looking wealthy.”(06:47)

“I define a mini-retirement as any time you step away from your 9-5 for a month or longer to focus on something that really matters to you.”(12:07)

“I always internalized this narrative that creative or entrepreneurial work is for other people, for maybe more privileged people, for maybe richer people, for people who don’t need a pay check on Friday…And so I never really pursued it.”(18:47)

“You don’t go through it once and then it’s done. It’s like concentric circles. Every time you grow outside of your comfort zone, there’s a little bit of discomfort there until it becomes familiar and then you grow some more.”(22:32)

“It doesn’t have to be time consuming, but give it an hour a quarter to sit down and to think through, ‘Where do I really want to go? What really matters to me? What’s really important tome? What are my core values?’ Because it becomes like a filter that we can then easily and quickly make other choices with.”(30:14)

“Sometimes work is a little like mint. It’s a little bit invasive and it kind of self cedes. And, if you leave it unchecked, it will spread to the entire box. And the only way you can grow mint outside of a container is to aggressively trim that back constantly; you have to police it. And for me, work is the same way.”(37:34)